Egyptian Winter
by Rhelle
Summary: *Revised and improved* A Yami Bakura POV on his life in Egypt, his hikari, and his search for the Millenium Items. He's portrayed somewhat differently in this fic. Read on to find out. One-shot


Author's Note:

Yami Bakura is Bakura

Ordinary Bakura is Ryou

Just so you don't get confused ^^;

Second A/N: Personally, I like Bakura. I'm also sick - completely and totally sick - of all these Ryou beatdown fics, and "Bakura the Evil Bastard Tries to Kill Everyone - Again." So I wrote this. It's a more compassionate view of everyone's favorite tomb robber, because this is the way I see him. So if you like it, then thank you very much and please review ^_^; If you don't, then fuck you very much, but please review anyway. I'd like to know where I went wrong.

Also, thank you very much to everyone who reviewed before (both times ::sweatdrop::), but I had to edit and update this. I'm sorry, and thanks again ^_^;;

Without further adieu (however you spell that), may I present....

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Egyptian Winter

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~Bakura's Story~

"When the stars threw down their spears,

And water'd heaven with their tears,

Did He smile His work to see?

Did He who made the Lamb make thee?"

~_The Tyger_, William Blake

Weakness. I don't despise those with it, I pity them. For the weak are like poorly crafted glass; they are made to be broken. If you are born weak, you are born to suffer. You spend your life in the shadow of one brutal master or another, your every word and action controlled, and die young or in torment. Often both.

That is why I pity them.

I did not raise my family to be weak: I would not suffer them that fate. Yes, I did have a family once, many millennia ago, when I lived among the squalor and splendor of ancient Egypt.

I myself was purged of all weaknesses as a child. I grew up in what would have been the slums of the city, had such a term existed five thousand years ago. Life there was not easy - it never is - but it was, I suppose, good training for later life.

My mother was a slave, imported from the Isles of Mist, the lands of the Keltoi tribes, and she had been freed shortly before I was born. It was from her that I got my fair hair, light skin, and somewhat malicious personality. I never knew her name; to me, she will always remain, simply, Mama.

My father I never knew. He was Mama's former master and he had used her - against her will - for his personal pleasure. I was the result.

But nonetheless, she loved me, and cared for me the best way she knew. A husbandless woman with a child to care for, she eked out in existence for us in a world that didn't give a fuck if we lived or died. I respect her still for that.

Magic flowed through my veins, but not much and not powerfully. Besides, at that point in history, the person born without magic was more the exception. Only the truly extraordinary could make a living for themselves through their gifts. 

Mama was like me in that way (the Keltoi are a very magical people), but she was not talented in any particular trade. She took what work she could get, and that ranged from sheep herding to prostitution, and everything in between. She had no relatives or friends to look after me, and so I learned early on how to care for myself.

I fell in with a pack of other children in the same situation, and together, we roamed the trackless alleyways and backroads of the city. Though young (the oldest among us was fourteen, and most were much younger), we were fierce and we protected our own, against slavers, strangers, feral dogs, different gangs of children, or any other of the countless dangers that stalked the shadowy backroads of the city. It was among the filthiest, poorest, wildest children in all Egypt that I first learned of love and loyalty. Many of them became my lifelong friends, and one of them became my wife. 

I still remember when I first met her. She was a beautiful sight, to a very small and very alone boy. A friend! The word held such hope, such promise.

She was my first friend, and she would be my best, though that friendship would become something more. As children, we vowed we'd always be together, and we kept that vow 'till the end of our days. There was nothing I knew about myself that she didn't, also. She was my one unshakable faith in the world; she was everything good to me in life.

Heh. Sad, isn't it? Now I cannot even remember her name.

We lived our lives on the brink. We never had enough food, drink, or clothing, and some of us didn't even have a home. We had only each other to take care of us, and so we learned to get what we needed by our only available means. Which was usually stealing.

We took what we needed, and fled into the familiar darkness of the alleyways and the safety therein. Sometimes we escaped by virtue of our wits, sometimes - literally - by magic.

I proved adept at this new game. I supposed it was my due; I was born with no real talents or prospects. I had nothing, and even less hope of changing that. I had to - somehow - find a way to survive. 

For stealing did, eventually, become my livelihood, despite the taboo against it. But perhaps that is why I found it so alluring.

Many of the children I'd met on the streets became raiders along with me, and together, we broke into the tombs of kings and Pharaohs and took what we pleased. The dead have no use for material possessions, anyway.

We sold most of what we took, but one thing I kept. It was a pendant, a great ring, from the tomb of a king long lost to the wind and desert sand. It was made of heavy gold, with the shape of a pyramid and the Eye of Ra in the center. Spikes hung down from the edges, wicked-looking and sharp. Even in those days, it was considered ancient.

I can't say why I kept it, even now. Perhaps I felt a sense of fate, of destiny intertwined. It could have been just a coincidence, or perhaps there were greater things at work. This pendant would one day come to be called the Millenium Ring.

In the tombs, there was the matter of curses and traps, but that was hardly an issue. Our collective magics, though still not great, were protection enough from the dangers that lurked in the darkness of the crypts, and the monsters of the Shadow Realm under our control could fend off any physical threats. But that aside, the graves yielded wealth unsurpassed. A single one was enough to support a man for the rest of his life, and we raided many.

The poverty of my childhood was quickly and completely forgotten. My children had all they needed, and my mother lived comfortably in the latter years of her life. That, if nothing else, made being a tomb robber worth my while.

My family...how I loved them - how I still do. I can no longer remember their names, but I remember their hearts and souls. And in the end, that's all that matters. 

No one in life will love you quite so unquestioningly as your children. I know mine did.

They didn't care that I had not been born purely Egyptian; they didn't care that I was a tomb robber, one who made his living off the dead; they didn't care about any of my other, countless imperfections, though they knew them all. They loved me simply for who I was to them. 

I taught them to learn from the world around them, and how to survive in it. I gave them my knowledge, I gave them my protection, and...I gave them my love.

Strange, isn't it? All the qualities we most value in ourselves and others - friendship, affection, love - are the only things that can shatter your mind and break your heart. 

Love is the worst. It is a weakness, an unavoidable and devastating one. For you see, all the joy and fulfillment of it comes with an inevitable price, and that price is loneliness. Sooner or later, by death or betrayal, you will find yourself alone again. And when you do, all your worries, sufferings, and secret fears will rise up and circle 'round you in the dark, like jackals stalking a dying animal. I despise love because I know what its death can do - I have lived it.

I would take my own life, just to be with them again, but I know it wouldn't work. In killing myself, I would kill Ryou also, and that is something I cannot do. Besides, I'm a spirit, and spirits can't die. So I must suffer my fate, the curse that the Pharaoh laid on me so many years ago: I must live, and live alone. I will spend the rest of eternity replaying their deaths - over and over again - in my mind.

It was my fault they died. I, a tomb robber and a raider, was their father. Their lives were forfeit from the day they were born.

I had been away, out on a raid, so they were left alone. I have never forgiven myself for that. If I had been with them, perhaps I could have - somehow - kept them safe, kept them from death.

If...perhaps...somehow...why do I torture myself with these things? What's done is done, and there is no help for it now.

I came home to find them dead. Life became a nightmare once I walked in the door.

My children had been caught in their beds, helpless, and killed in their sleep. My mother had tried to run, and they'd stabbed her in the back. My wife had fought them, so they'd tortured her before they killed her: her eyes had been burned out.

I walked through the ruin of what I had loved on silent feet that did not touch the ground, like a phantom among the living instead of the other way around. I felt as though my soul had been torn out and thrown to the scavengers, leaving only emptiness behind. Thoughts were confused, realities lost. A part of me died when they did.

But mourning my family was not a luxury to be granted to me: their killers waited in the shadows.

They were a pack of the Pharaoh's personal guards, sent by him to capture me. I was their real target, you see; my family had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and for that they had been killed.

It is said that pain is the original anger, and that statement was never truer for me than on that night. My despair exploded upon seeing them, the men who had killed my family. The void within me filled with anger, and every other emotion was forgotten.

My sword scything through the air like a macabre windmill, I fought them with a rage unsurpassed. They captured me in the end (it was inevitable; they were many and I was only one), but at least I have the satisfaction of knowing I made them hurt for it.

I was brought before the Pharaoh, seated in his high golden throne. He looked down at me with eyes hard and cold as amethyst stones, and his lip lifted in disgust. He said, "Tomb robber. You have no respect for the dead, and even less for the living. You have pillaged the graves of my forefathers and taken the treasures that rightly belonged to them. You know nothing of pride or justice."

My entire being burned with rage, and that rage has not faded with five thousand years' passing. Had I not been bound and flanked by guards, I think I would have killed him. I made a vow then, one of anger and hatred. _I will see the Pharaoh fall, I will make him suffer as he made my family suffer. _"You accuse _me_ of lacking justice?! You, who sentenced my family to death without so much as a trial or questioning?! I thought a Pharaoh was supposed to be a man of his people, a fair judge, not a blind killer of women and children. Power is making hard your heart, my Pharaoh."

To speak in such a manner to a Pharaoh, a god incarnate, was unimaginable. And indeed, the sentence for this crime was death. But it did not matter to me. I was a dead man anyway, and I had already lost all I truly needed. It did not care what other tortures the Pharaoh chose to inflict upon me; it was just rain in the river.

I sneered, "So what will you do with me now, your majesty?"

The Pharaoh's expression did not change. Instead, his gaze dropped to the pendant I wore. "Do you like that, tomb robber?" (he spat the word, disgusted) "It belonged to one of my great-grandfathers, an ancient Pharaoh. It is yours now, though by theft and not true right. But I hope you like it, tomb robber, for you will spend the rest of eternity inside it."

The next night, under the star-studded blanket of midnight, the ritual to seal my soul within my ring took place. I can not remember much of it. I don't think I want to.

For the next five thousand years, I was locked away with my darkness and my anguish. Now I am free, and I will not live alone and in suffering ever again. 

Ryou is the one I have to thank for that. He was he who freed me, and for that, I owe him everything.

As for him, my hikari, the light to my darkness...I tolerate him. He has learned not to go against me, and in return, I do not harm him. But he is not so bad to share a body with.

Strange...he reminds me of my children sometimes. Pure, innocent, sweet, not yet realizing all the horror the world holds. So, of course, I must protect him from it. It is my duty and my honor.

The death of his mother a few years ago hit him hard, and I spent many long nights trying to heal him of his own bitter tears, trying to shield him from his own pain.

Around the same time, and even before, he was plagued often by bullies, but they have left him alone for quite a while now, ever since I came to him. Ah yes, I fondly recall the last few times they went after him. Instead of sweet, gentle Ryou, they found themselves facing me. And I am, by no one's definition, sweet or gentle. I think a few of the boys had to stay in the hospital for quite some time.

But most of all, I try to protect him from myself. I'm no angel, Ra knows, and I've done many terrible things in my life, a lot of them while in Ryou's body. If he knew...no, I will not think about that. It's not like it matters. I erase the event from his memory, and he never recalls what occurred. It is better that way.

But it does not matter how much I care for him; I will not allow him to get in the way of gathering the Millenium Items. I will let no one and nothing in this world or those beyond keep me from seeing my family again.

That is why I hunt for the Millenium Items, to be with them again. Possession of all seven Items will bring one power unsurpassed, over the living...and the dead. With that ancient magic, I can reach back over millennia and reunite myself with the family I lost. Anyone who tries to stop me will die a very painful death.

I was a thief, and I am one still. I will obtain the Millenium Items by any means necessary. I does not matter to me what I must sacrifice to do that. I _will_ see my family again, I swear it.

But it is strange to think that he is just like me. Pegasus, I mean. He's the one that brought these memories back.

In the moment I killed him, our minds collided and our memories were confused. I saw into his past, and I saw what he had lost - all the family he'd ever known, his Cecilia. He hunted the Millenium Items for the same reason I did, to bring back someone he had loved. We are not so very different, in the end.

...But it no longer matters. He has what he needs; he is with his Cecilia again. And I am one step closer to being with my own family.

I walk out of Pegasus' sanctuary with the Millenium Eye clenched in my fist. My hand is sticky with blood from tearing the Eye out of his flesh, and I lick it away casually, savoring the metallic tang. I have always been a killer at heart.

Ryou is distraught. His presence has been pushed to the back of our mind, but our mental link is still strong and I can hear him perfectly well.

//It wasn't right, 'Kura. He was exhausted and weak. He died unjustly//

/He lived as a man of power, and he died as one. It could have been us dead back there, and you know it. Besides, I need the Eye to be with my family again./

//They are _dead_, Bakura, and there is nothing you can do to bring them back! Their bones are less then dust, and it is madness to kill others in the name of the dead and gone!//

/NO!/ I tear down the barriers between our minds and let the full force of my rage and pain hit him. It is the mental equivalent of striking him - hard. /Then I will _make_ a way to see them again, through blood, magic, and love!/

Ryou says nothing. He's hurt, and more than a little frightened. Despite myself, I almost feel guilty. 

/Ryou...stay out of my way. I will get them back. I must. They are the only ones that ever cared about me/

//I care//

A slight smile brushes my lips, and my anger melts like ice in the sun. Yes, he is very much like my children; unquestioningly loyal, faithful through suffering and pain. It is good to have him with me.

/Thank Ra for that/

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~*FINIS*~

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Rhelle: I love the idea of Bakura calling someone Mama

Bakura: ;;;; Shut up, you fool!

Ryou: And little Bakuras calling him Daddy :::snicker:::

Rhelle: Awwww ^^;

Bakura: :::whips the Millenium Eye at their faces:::

But never mind them. Thanks for reading, and please review! 


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